Voters reject party hoppers

Politics of defection proves to be costly for the party hoppers in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, reports M Hasan.

indiaUpdated: May 13, 2007 21:20 IST

M Hasan

None

With Mayawati wave sweeping across the state, politics of defection proved to be costly for the party hoppers in the assembly elections.

The electorate has rejected a large numbers of leaders who had split the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress to help the Mualayam Singh Yadav government attain the majority in the last Assembly.

Anti-incumbency factor that worked against the Samajwadi Party also saw several Mulayam Singh’s ministers losing the elections.

Interestingly, most of the leaders who had joined the Bahujan Samaj Party at the last minute, have won. In fact, two of them – Badshah Singh (who left the BJP) and A P Singh (who left the Rashtriya Lok Dal) were made ministers by Mayawati on Sunday.

At the hustings, the worst affected were the 37 BSP defectors who had split the party to form Loktantrik Bahujan Dal (LBD) on September 6, 2003.

Later the LBD was merged with the Samajwadi Party. Only 18 of them could make it to the 15th Assembly.

“The voters have given a clear message. They have rejected Aya ram gaya ram politics”, remarked VK Shukla, a Lucknow based businessman.

“There was a general feeling that politics of defection had largely corrupted the administration,” commented Ashish Mehra, a lecturer in Lucknow.

Of the eight BJP leaders who had left the party at the last minute, only three could win. Mahendra Singh Yadav, husband of former chief secretary and now chairperson Revenue Board Neera Yadav, who had left the BJP for SP also lost from Bulandshahr. Of the total 47 leaders who had defected to SP, 28 have lost.

Interestingly, Amarmani Tripathi who had switched over from the BSP to SP and contested from Dehradun jail has succeeded in winning from Laxmipur (Maharajganj). Similarly Danish cartoon-bounty fame Haji Yaqoob Qureshi who also hopped from BSP to SP and later joined United Democratic Front (UDF) won from Meerut City but lost his traditional Kharkhaunda seat to BSP.